Buttered Noodles and Barely Friends

I am sure you have heard the analogy about a woman’s brain being like a plate of noodles?

Or one looooong noodle actually.

One long noodle beginning at birth and carrying all the happiness and worries and blessings and scars from life as we have lived it,weaving everything into present day so you can be making buttered noodles at 10 on a Monday night and be able to still recall moments from your childhood before the butter melts.

Amazing really.

Though we try, we do not categorize things. We just meld everything together into our noodle of living.

Good and bad sit together on our plate of heaping pasta called our memory.

Recently I read someone’s blog who quite poetically spoke about not closing the door to friendship.

We have all been there.

Time and distance or past hurt have separated you for some reason or another and you are a hair’s breadth away from not only closing the door, but duck tapping and pad locking it shut.

For keeps.

Some friendships surprise you.

The door grows cobwebs, the hinges are just about rusted through and you have given up hope. You don’t say much about it or do much about it, you kindov ease away from it and prepare to forget it.

And then it happens. Just a note in passing, just four words, just a lifetime of memories and good times that come flooding back in moments buttering everything and loosening up what was tight and awkward.

“Just thinkin’ about you.”

And a sweet breeze catches the cobwebs and wide the door to your friendship swings and your heart soars with new hope.

I have been the one to send the note, and I have been the one to receive it.

I have been blessed to push the door open and blessed when it swings of its own accord.

Where are you with a friend?

Tonight I was a recipient of one of those notes. Unexpected.

From my sister.

I am the third in a string of girls. One smart, one distant and one loud.

I will leave you to choose which one I was and still am.

And it seemed like we were always our own forces, my sister and I.

Never headed in the same direction, never meeting in the middle, never understanding the other or what was happening in their life.

So we ran silent.

My heart begged for her acceptance. Years passed and many tears and pleas and “why don’tyou like me’s” finally turned into, “have it your way.”

And I could have cared less about the door to our friendship.

It was in the cellar of an old house and an old life.

I was grown up now and needed to find my own way without her.

And more years would go by and I would find myself remembering her birthday and her favorite candy and wanted to reach out but almost forgot how.

Perhaps the past just bled too far into the future to try to remedy things. Let the sleeping dog lie.

Yet I always still wanted her to love me.

I wanted her to like who I had become.

Still more years would pass before I would even try to find the doorknob.

And then I became so brokenhearted. I remembered that our years are so fleeting, so brief, soon gone. I didn’t want something to happen to her or I and she not know that deep down, though hidden, I loved her.

I liked her.

So I would tell her here and there.

Family gatherings and such.

I stared sitting closer, listening more and talking less, until one day before she was to go in for surgery, I went to see her just to pray over her. Pray with her, face to face.

And I left her and wept on the long drive home.

Because I love her.

Because I missed her.

Because she is my sister, my own flesh and blood friend and no matter where a door is hidden it can never be removed. Though closed there will always be a crack of light reminding me that it is still there if I would take the time to open it.

And then tonight, unexpected, swinging the door open for me to see was a note.

Meet our Family

I am "Wife" to my college sweetheart Joel, I am "Mom" to six children, Isaac- 13, Abigail- 12, Caleb-10, Nathan- 9, Anna- 6 and Alayna- 4. We are not your "normal" family. We live simply, love much, learn something new everyday and seek to be a real blessing to others and a witness for Christ here in our corner of the globe. I am busy, as all Mom's and Wives are, but love having the opportunity to jot down some things that will make us all laugh later!